A summer afternoon in Newport, Kentucky, feels like America at its very best.
The quaint streets are packed with historic Queen Anne and Greek Revival-style buildings occupied by mom-and-pop businesses.
Locals are friendly – and the city’s green, leafy streets feel completely safe.
But just a few hundred yards away, across the Ohio River that serves as the Kentucky-Ohio state line, sits Cincinnati.
The Democrat-run city has become a byword for progressive policing and politics run amok after a July 26 mass brawl in the city’s downtown sparked global outrage.
And locals in Newport – which is part of the staunchly-Republican Campbell County – were quick to condemn their nightmare neighbor when Daily Mail visited Tuesday.
Betty Applegate owns and operates her namesake store, Mustang Betty’s Antiques, in Newport’s main commercial district.
She told Daily Mail that she wouldn’t cross one of the two bridges linking Newport to Cincinnati without carrying two firearms.
‘I don’t go to Cincinnati. Not unless I had two guns, one on each side’, Applegate said – gesturing with her two hands as if she was pulling two firearms from hip holsters.
Applegate said Newport has the odd issue with petty crime and drunkenness.
But she said that policing in her home city is far more proactive than in Cincinnati, meaning bad behavior is quickly stamped-out.
‘You see it here a little bit, somebody overdosed in a parking lot. It does happen but not like it does over there’, she added.
Cincinnati’s police chief Teresa Theetge scolded journalists for taking clips of the city’s now-notorious brawl ‘out of context’ last week – then dodged the question when asked what that context was.
She is currently facing a lawsuit from members of her own department over claims she is an anti-white racist.
Some conservatives have claimed the mass-fight was an example of black-on white racism.
Meanwhile, left wingers including Cincinnati Democrat councilor Victoria Parks have suggested the victims deserved to be beaten up, after a video emerged where a person could be heard saying the n-word.
Back in Newport, the impact of the chaos was clear to see, with one of Betty Applegate’s patrons admitting to Daily Mail: ‘I avoid [Cincinnati] as much as possible.’
Downtown Cincinnati was eerily desolate when Daily Mail toured the city Monday.
Many of its fine historic buildings lay vacant, with vagrants injecting themselves close to city hall in broad daylight.
But Newport was buzzing with life at the same time the very next day, suggesting that a brighter future could lie ahead for Cincinnati – if it cleans up its act.
Applegate speculated that Cincinnati has become so soft on crime that its locals are watching the chaos unfold, then trying to wreak even worse havoc for attention.
‘One tries to outdo the other ones, that’s what I’ve always said’, she said.
In her thirteen years in business she said there has only been one individual that ever made her nervous, a man who she said had previously been caught using fraudulent credit cards.
The incident was a far cry from the man-on-woman beating that rocked Cincinnati last weekend, which left a woman called Holly covered in bruises.
Across the street, Jerry and Sherry Peluso run the Peluso Market – a family owned grocery store that opened its doors in 1931 and remains in family hands.
Jerry, a beloved Cincinnati Red’s fan, said that the only reason he ever crosses the state line is to see the ball game.
He said: ‘I walk over the bridge, and run back’, much to the enjoyment of his wife.
Sherry agreed with her husband. She says there’s a seafood restaurant she’d love to visit in Cincinnati – but that the city feels far too sketchy to visit at the minute.
She added: ‘Just because of the neighborhood I don’t want to go, it’s gotten worse over time. Especially lately.’
Jerry previously served as the Mayor of Newport for 12 years. He said Cincinnati’s issues are generational and that the lack of strong father figures is partly to blame.
He explained: ‘You have to have a strong father figure at home, when you do the kids tend to not get in trouble.
‘The people that really care have to get involved, nobody wants to address the root of the problem. We’ve got to take care of each other, we’ve got to love one another.
‘Cincinnati has got a lot of history, it’s beautiful. You’ve got buildings that have been around since the late 1800s. It’s a shame that we can’t enjoy all of those things.’
One local man, who only gave his name as Ron, said he believes the problems affecting Cincinnati are due to the lack of a police presence.
‘When you look at the police force downtown it’s big, but they are not there. They are not there when they should be. There is no patrolmen, they are all gone’, he said.
Ron said that Newport in years past had its own crime issues that had gotten out of control due to a gang’s presence in the area.
According to Ron, police in Newport cracked down on the illicit behavior, with patrolmen a clear visible force on the streets in the past.
The difference between how crime was handled in Newport and how issues are being dealt with in Cincinnati couldn’t be further apart.
Last week’s viral video drew widespread and high profile condemnation – with Ohioan Vice President JD Vance and gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy among those outraged.
As of Tuesday night, police had managed to arrest five suspects in connection with the high profile brawl.
The latest arrest was of Patrick Rosemond, 38, who was taken into custody by the FBI in Atlanta, Georgia.
Authorities in Ohio say Rosemond is facing two charges of felonious assault and aggravated riot. He is to be extradited to the Buckeye State to face the allegations.
Dominique Kittle, 37, Jermaine Matthew, 39, Montianez Merriweather, 34, and Dekyra Vernon, 24, are the others alleged to have participated in the attack.
Holly, a single mother, suffered severe brain trauma during the attack and has been forced to go underground over threats on her life following the attack..
Images emerged last week of her extensive injuries, revealing that both sides of her face were extremely bruised following the assault.
Her bottom lip was also cut open slightly, with dark bruises seen around her neck and upper torso.
Cincinnati officials have vowed to clean up the city by cracking down on crime and flooding the city’s downtown with police officers.
But there was little evidence of that clean-up when Daily Mail visited Monday.
And residents in Newport say they’ll believe that vow when they see it.
In a final blast at her Ohio neighbors, Sherry Peluso said that anybody who still wants to visit Cincinnati must be ‘sleeping under a rock.’